Wildfires to worsen in Greece as US hospitals put sweltering patients in iced body bags
Southern Europe will continue to swelter on Wednesday amid warnings the heat could intensify in the next few days and predictions that Sardinia could record temperatures above 47°C.
Wildfires continued to rage across the continent, with emergency crews fighting blazes across Greece, the Spanish island of La Palma, and the Swiss Alps.
Further afield, soaring temperatures across the southern United States have seen hospitals in Arizona using body bags stuffed full of ice to cool down patients who have overheated.
Red alerts were issued for cities across Italy and countries including Spain, Croatia, Serbia, southern Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro.
A forest fire broke out in the village of Bitsch in canton Valais in Switzerland on Monday that, while initially receding on Tuesday, spread “explosively” overnight thanks to the high temperatures and strong winds.
Fires are burning for a third day near the Greek capital, Athens, as authorities braced for a new heatwave forecast to start on Thursday, stoking tinderbox conditions across the country.
Firefighters battled fires across the country, with the most severe in the Dervenochoria region north-west of Athens, and others in the towns of Loutraki and Kouvaras.
They worked through the night to keep flames at bay and away from refineries along the coast, and about 1,200 children were evacuated from a summer camp.
Air water bombers undertook operations over the towns of Mandra, west of Athens, and Loutraki, close to the Corinth canal which separates mainland Greece from the Peloponnese.
By Wednesday morning, the blaze was close to residential areas but away from the refineries. Flames kept roaring back to life as winds constantly changed direction, and thick smoke blanketed the wider area, state ERT TV said.
Four aircraft sent from Italy and France will join the efforts today, authorities said. Firefighters across the country have been deployed to help battle the blazes.
Greek meteorologists have said the adverse hot weather is likely to intensify, as the country prepares for a second heat wave.
Theodoros Yiannaros, a Greek weather forecaster, told state TV: said: “Although the winds will recede from tomorrow [Thursday] this doesn’t mean that the danger of fires will lessen. There will be a drop in danger perhaps tomorrow but during the weekend the risk will be very high … difficult times are ahead of us.”
Most cities across Italy, including Bologna, Bari, Catania, Cagliari, Palermo, Turin Rome and Florence, have been placed on red alert, meaning the heat is a health risk to everyone, not just the vulnerable. There has been a sharp rise in the number of people seeking emergency care for heat-related illnesses in hospitals across the country.
Some hospitals have seen up to a 25 per cent increase in people arriving at A&E departments, with conditions including dehydration or other symptoms caused by heat.
Temperatures in Rome hit 41.8°C on Tuesday, breaking the previous record of 40.7°C set in June 2022. Sicily reached about 41°C and there were highs of 46.3°C in Sardinia.
Electricity consumption reached a 2023 record on Tuesday afternoon as people turned on fans and ramped up the air conditioning, the grid operator Terna has said.
The number of red alerts for extreme heat in Italian cities will rise from 23 to 27, with Sardinia expected to record temperatures above 47°C.
The heat record for Europe was set in Sicily in August 2021, with 48.8°C.
In France, a record 29.5°C was recorded in the Alpine ski resort of Alpe d’Huez, while 40.6°C was recorded for the first time in Verdun in the foothills of the Pyrenees.
Météo-France, France’s weather service, has put nine regions in the south-east on high heatwave alert. The regions are clustered in eastern Occitania and most of Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur regions. They include Vaucluse, Alpes-Maritimes, the Hérault, Gard, Bouches-du-Rhone, the Var, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, and the island of Corsica.
Meanwhile, a “heat dome” has settled across much of the southern United States, leaving nearly 100 million Americans from Florida to California living in dangerously high temperatures.
In Phoenix, Arizona, where temperatures hit 43°C for the 19th straight day, officials said hospitals were using body bags filled with ice to cool down some patients who have overheated.
Arizona’s largest utility service said that customers had broken the record for most electricity used at once, as residents turned on air conditioners to escape the heat.
The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has said that heatwaves will become more severe in the years ahead, and that extreme weather patterns highlight the need for more climate action.
“These events will continue to grow in intensity and the world needs to prepare for more intense heatwaves,” said John Nairn, senior extreme heat adviser at the UN agency.
On Sunday a remote town in China’s northern Xinjiang province registered a record of 52.3°C, smashing China’s national record of 50.3°C.
That day, the oasis city of Turpan, west of the Flaming Mountains recorded temperatures of more than 45°C at 31 local weather stations, with five of them breaking 50°C, according to state media on Wednesday.
This week, tourists flocked to see China’s Flaming Mountains, famed for high ground temperatures which reached 80°C on Wednesday, according to a 12-metre-tall thermometer that displays the real-time surface temperature.
Each summer, tourists gather at the Flaming Mountains on the northern rim of the Turpan Depression in Xinjiang to admire their corrugated slopes of brown-red sandstone and feel the super-charged heat emanating from the ground.
Farmers in Xinjiang, one of the world’s biggest producers of cotton, have been told to step up watering and irrigation to prevent their crops from withering in the scorching sun.
On Wednesday, Beijing logged its 28th day of temperatures of more than 35°C, setting a new record for the most number of high-temperature days in a year, a milestone that was last broken just a day earlier.
